It has grown to be a major source of low-income housing in downtown Seattle, with more than 1,000 residents and 17 retail tenants in a dozen buildings and an annual operating budget of $17 million.

At about the same time, community organizers founded the Downtown Emergency Service Center in Seattle to provide emergency shelter and other services for chronically homeless men and women at risk because of mental illness and drug or alcohol abuse.

Like the Plymouth Group, it would become a national model for innovative ways to combat homelessness.

By 1985, it was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to integrate drug treatment, mental health and nursing care into its shelters.

In 1994, it moved toward solutions aimed at permanent housing. It opened its first supportive housing program in a renovated hotel, offering on-site clinical help for dozens of residents.

Three years later, it introduced the “housing first” principle, opening a four-story 40-apartment building for the homeless, alcoholic and mentally ill. It is based on the conviction that treatment is more likely to succeed when individuals have stable housing.

By 2003, it reached a turning point with the $27 million renovation of another hotel. It would house a shelter and day center, administrative offices and five floors of supportive housing. It marked the first time the agency housed more people than it sheltered.

“We think that any person who is homeless is ready for housing because we think housing is the key to ending homelessness,” said Nicole Macri, the agency’s administrative director.”

She noted a Journal of the American Medical Association study found significant savings in its program to house chronic alcoholics who consumed considerable public dollars in emergency room visits, jail costs and other expenses.

It found median costs were about $4,000 per person a month prior to housing and about $1,500 a month afterward.

“When you eliminate the chaos of homelessness from someone’s life, lots of good things happen,” Macri said.